South Atlanta Community Showed Full Support for Carver Neighborhood Market Grand Opening, May 16

ATLANTA – May 19, 2015 – Focused Community Strategies (FCS), the Atlanta-based nonprofit transforming underserved neighborhoods to flourishing communities, hosted a successful grand opening event for the Carver Neighborhood Market on Saturday, May 16, 2015. The Carver Neighborhood Market, empowered by FCS, welcomed more than 100 people who joined in the afternoon’s festivities.

The event marked the highest in-store traffic volume to date since the soft opening on April 22, 2015. Influencers with FCS, the Atlanta Community Food Bank, and the Atlanta Board of Education attended and shared remarks during the ribbon cutting ceremony. Long-standing community member Jacqueline Walker had the honor of joining the ceremony and cutting the ribbon.

“After more than a year of planning and preparation for the market’s grand opening, we received a tremendously positive response from the community – affirming that we are doing the right thing for the neighborhood,” said Jim Wehner, president of FCS. “We are shifting the conversation from ‘what isn’t’ to ‘what could be,’ and from what we’ve seen so far in South Atlanta, the possibilities are endless.”

After following the growing crisis around food deserts, FCS identified the opportunity to create the Carver Neighborhood Market and began planning in 2014. Through the grand opening of the market, FCS has fulfilled not only a need for the neighborhood, but also its mission at large – transforming Historic South Atlanta from a food desert to a food oasis.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) defines urban food deserts as low income communities where a third of the community lives more than a mile from a grocery store. In the Atlanta area, more than half a million people live in what the USDA would identify as food deserts, and in the South Atlanta community specifically, the closest national chain grocery to the Carver Neighborhood Market is approximately 3.5 miles away.

The Carver Neighborhood Market is part of the South Atlanta Marketplace and located at 1297 Jonesboro Road, Atlanta, GA 30315. For more information, visit www.carvermarket.com, or join the community on Facebook and Twitter.

Focused Community Strategies (FCS) partners with underserved neighborhoods to provide innovative and holistic development that promotes flourishing communities where God’s shalom is present. FCS is a team of visionaries and social entrepreneurs, transforming distressed urban neighborhoods through Christian community development. For more than 30 years, FCS has demonstrated that the most transformative urban ministry is community-based. With an emphasis on neighborhood leadership and a commitment to mixed-income housing development, the FCS strategy yields both social and spiritual vitality as well as economic viability. For more information, visit: www.fcsministries.org.